It's still an idea
You can already see the company, but the machine doesn't exist yet. Together we decide what needs to be in place first, what can wait, and how it can grow along from day one.
How I look at companies
Promise, machine, margin. Together we build the machine behind your promise.
A brand is a story, a promise to customers. The company is the machine that keeps that promise every single day: software, sometimes hardware, always people and process. The boring part, you could argue. To me it's the best part. That machine also has to make money, and run efficiently enough that its makers don't drown in the work it creates. That whole is why you started as an entrepreneur in the first place. I see where every piece fits, however small, and how it carries its part of the machine. That intersection of brand and machine is where I like to work most.
One loop, not separate departments
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Promise
The brand, the story, what a customer expects before they buy anything. It holds everything together. A strong promise makes decisions easier: what fits, what doesn't.
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Machine
The company itself. Everything that keeps the promise: product, software, integrations, sometimes hardware, process and team. A good machine gives the hundredth customer the same experience as the first.
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Margin
Revenue and profit, but also time. A machine that only runs because the founders step in every evening is not a machine, it's a treadmill.
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The loop
How customers buy, use and come back flows into the machine: into the product, the roadmap, the automation. That way every customer makes the company stronger instead of heavier.
Where the machine grinds
Sometimes the machine is already running and grinds somewhere. Sometimes it only exists as a plan or an idea. Either way it starts with the same question: what needs to be built to keep the promise?
The promise outgrows the machine
Marketing promises what the product can't deliver. Customers drop off, support explodes, and the brand pays the bill.
The margin rests on the founders
Every new customer means more manual work. Growth feels like falling behind, and the people who should steer the company are stuck doing the work.
The loop doesn't close
What customers do and ask disappears into an inbox or a spreadsheet. The product learns nothing, and the same problems come back every month.
Ask, dig, build, repeat
I don't show up with a ready-made plan. I work with you and your team, and help figure out what to build next to keep the promise you want to make, or are already making.
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Ask
I start with questions, a lot of questions. Why this promise? Why this way? Why now? That's how pain points and things nobody saw yet come to the surface. Or they don't: if all is well, we leave it. Just thinking it through together clears the head and sharpens the picture.
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Dig
From first contact to invoice and back: how a customer moves, or will move, through your company, where the promise grinds, and where manual work sits that doesn't belong there.
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Build
Together with you and your team: product, software, automation and integrations, and hardware where needed. Whatever keeps the promise and protects the margin comes first. The rest later, or never.
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Repeat
Customer use, feedback and data back into product and process, including through AI agents that can read and use your offer. And then again: ask, dig, build.
I do this as a fractional CTO, as an advisor or as a co-founder. Tech is where I start, but rarely the whole answer.
Where I did it
nanopixo, as co-founder. The promise to real estate agents: one URL in, ready-to-publish, on-brand promo videos out, in any language. The machine: an AI pipeline plugged into Whise and Zabun, with its own MCP server. Every video customers make tunes the pipeline.
Lobbi PMS, as CTO from 2020 to 2026. The promise to independent hotels: a system you can run your whole day on. 300+ hotels in production, and what they ran into every day set the roadmap. Acquired by RoomRaccoon in 2026.
Stroom, as shareholder. A craft brewery in Ghent, and the loop in its purest form: a brand in a glass, kettles and kegs as the machine, and a margin earned again with every batch.
Where is your machine at?
Fifteen minutes is usually enough to see where the machine grinds, or what it should look like. If not, you'll leave with a clearer view of your company.